In the Roman Catholic calendar, the feast of St. Stephen is the day after Christmas. The day after Christmas is also the best way to describe the mood in New Orleans these days. Last week was a breathless run up to the NFC Championship game (yes, this is a sports essay, not a religious one, though in this part of the South it could be argued that the two are the same). The Saints versus the Chicago Bears for a berth in the Super Bowl. References to the Saints were everywhere, in every television commercial and every newspaper ad. Storefronts festooned with Saints signs and decorations. Houses with team flags on their porches, and every car with a bumper sticker or sign in the window. Even restaurants were adding Saints-inspired items to their menus.
Now it is all over, after a 39-14 beating at the hands of the Bears, and it feels like the day after Christmas. All the presents are opened, the parties are over, family and friends have left and it is time to go back to work. And intensifying the depression is the thought that such fun will not come around for another year. It is an adrenaline withdrawal, a hangover, a time when Saints fans around the city are packing away their jerseys and fleur-de-lis sweatshirts and taking the Saints flag off the porch like so much Christmas paraphernalia. All that remains is the consolation that there will be next year.
This consolation, though, wears better in this town than in most others. After Katrina, there was real reason to wonder if there would ever again be a next year. Not just for the Saints, but for the entire city.
There is something unnatural about affection for sports teams. It seems like wasted love, to pour out all one’s emotions upon a group of professionals paid millions to knock the living hell out of each other. There is no reason necessarily to think that the powers of an athlete reflect in any way the virtue of a city. Yet many people do think that, and the thought is one of the oldest themes in Western literature. Achilles, the star of Homer's Illiad and still the greatest war hero of all, probably never existed, but remains the Hellenistic champion for all time. Every time I watch a Greek compete in the Olympics I think to myself, this man wants to be Achilles. He is Achilles. That Homeric glory never, ever, goes away.
The city of New Orleans wanted the Saints players to be their Achilleses (what’s the pleural of Achilles?) because it has had no champion as of late. Although there were many individual heroes lurking in the folds of the Katrina story, there was no overarching hero, no gallant leader that spoke to the heart of great suffering. After city, state, and federal leaders earned firm Fs for their performances after the storm, they have since gathered themselves together, shaken off the mud and grime of failure and risen to a solid D+.
(A friend of mine in college maintained that a D+ is the worst possible grade. You can earn an F, he said, with no effort whatsoever, but a D+ means you tried and still failed miserably. I think I agree with him.)
Then, after a year, along came the Saints with an A effort. An A effort that eventually translated into an A performance. New Orleans was not just happy about the football. It was happy the someone around here showed that excellence is still possible. Hopefully someone else is taking notes.
A few weeks ago another one of those educational rankings came out. Louisiana and Mississippi were both ranked 49th and 50th, or 47th and 49th, or 46th and 49th, or something like that. I can’t remember, and really don’t much care. That is about where our students stand in achievement tests every year. I will not draw out a long proof here, but will stipulate what should be painfully obvious – our lousy educational system has a whole lot to do with the problems New Orleans has. It is probably more responsible for Katrina than Katrina, if you get what I mean.
As usual, people came forward and blamed the problem on not enough money for public schools. Louisiana spends roughly $7,500 a year per public school student, which is not California money but not chump change either. By expenditure per student, Louisiana ranks 34th among states, not great but not all that bad either. (Mississippi pays about $5000 per student, putting it in the bottom 10.) This may seem a little arrogant to say, but if I had 30 children in a room each paying me $7500 to teach them, I think I could make some progress. That would be $225,000. You can do a lot with that kind of money. Not everything, but a lot.
I was educated in Louisiana. When I went to college in Virginia, my grades suffered not because I was unprepared but because I was over-prepared. The work was easier than I was used to and I quit studying. I took my first semester Chemistry final exam without opening the textbook, and, though I regretted doing that while I was taking the test, I still got out of the course with a B. It is possible to live in Louisiana and learn something.
The reason I learned in Louisiana when most kids didn’t was because I and my parents expected me to learn. Not learning was unacceptable. To be fair, I had a better social situation than many and my parents sent me to private schools. But my parents were not rich. They paid for my education because what the public schools offered was not acceptable. I was not well-educated because we were rich. I was well-educated because that was our family’s goal.
Children in Louisiana and Mississippi could have better schooling if their parents simply demanded it. The answer to “We need more money for schools” should be “Do better or you will lose the little that you have.” It is amazing how much better service you can get when you refuse to accept what is offered the first time around. “Not good enough” should be one of the most common phrases uttered by a good citizen to the government. Not enough money is never, and I mean never, an excuse for incompetence. If you accept the job you must live up to its demands, underpaid or not. A person who does sloppy work for $10 certainly isn't likely to find his competence just because $100 is now on the table.
Which leads us back to the Saints. The funk this city is in now has beneath it a foundation of trust. Saints fans asked for better, and better is what they got. Much, much better. New Orleanians, as much as theyare disappointed about not going to the Super Bowl, appreciate what they got. All of the Saints home games next year are sold out already, and thousands have signed up on a waiting list.
It is hard to tell which happened first: Did the fans raise their expectations and the Saints feed off of it, or did the Saints start playing better and the fans respond? With positive feedback cycles like this, it is often hard to tell where the upward spiral started. It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that once trust is established between two groups, both sides invest more and more emotion and energy.
Right now in the educational system around here, and in politics, the opposite is occurring. Leaders don’t lead because they do not think citizens will step up and make the sacrifices necessary to bring about success. Citizens do not respond to leadership because, well, they have a functioning memory.
Making progress means one side, either the political leaders or the citizens, needs to start doing more and expecting a whole lot more from the other side. Since the political leadership is, in my opinion, a bunch of nitwits, my hope lies with the citizens. New Orleans has always had citizens who, while eccentric and altogether too resistant to change, are nonetheless vibrant and very concerned about their unique culture. Perhaps they will demand more, and get it.
But that still does not take away the St. Stephen funk. Though New Orleans may feel this week is like the Feast of St. Stephen, we will hope it does not go too far in imitating the ancient saint. St. Stephen, you see, proclaimed the Gospel Truth to the religious elders at the Jerusalem Temple, and was stoned to death for it.